Leonov
The bridge, next day
Floyd was reviewing the cryptic final message from Bowman:
"My God! It's full of stars!"
He'd been in a pod, investigating the Monolith hanging in the L5 position, as it apparently had for at least four million years - the general opinion was that it'd been created and placed at the same time as T.M.A-1 - so what the hell had he meant? Linguistic analysis of the recording showed that he was genuinely trying to describe what he'd seen.
But what had he seen?
He played it three more times, while a graphic of the Monolith rotated on all axes in 3D on a monitor, but no enlightenment was forthcoming. Then the PA announced: "Dr. Floyd to the Medical Bay...Dr. Floyd to the Medical Bay."
There was only one thing that could be about.
Medical Bay
Sure enough, Curnow and Chandra had been revived; both were sitting unsteadily on their biobeds. They both had beards, as he'd had once revived. He addressed them with a cheer he didn't feel, though he was glad to see them. "How do you feel?"
He wasn't surprised by Curnow's sickly reply of "Ohh...like shit."
"That's about right," he nodded, having been through it.
"I have this terrible taste in my mouth," Chandra rasped.
Floyd told him, "Yeah, takes about twelve hours to go away. It helps if you drink something."
"Everything all right?" Chandra inquired.
"Yeah, everything's fine." With the ship, anyway.
"Are we there yet?"
"Well, we should reach the Discovery by tomorrow morning."
"How was aerobraking?" Chandra asked interestedly.
A fuckin' nightmare, Floyd didn't say. "Well, we're here, so it worked."
"Oh, I wish I could've seen that," Chandra marvelled.
"I wish I could've slept through it," Floyd answered ruefully. "By the way, all your messages are in the communication bay. They're probably decoded and copied by this time, I hope you didn't have anything private. There's, ah, a certain paranoia here." To put it mildly.
"Yeah, what the hell is going on?" Curnow wondered. "This doctor, uh, what's his name -?"
"Rudenko," Floyd filled in.
"- Rudenko," Curnow remembered, and scowled. "Yeah, he acted like he'd found us under a rock."
"It's this Honduras thing, it's getting worse," Floyd informed them.
"Still?" Curnow asked.
"There's a blockade. The Russians tried to break it...I don't know. It doesn't look good."
After a moment to digest that news, Chandra inquired, "Do we have all the telemetry on the Discovery and the Monolith?"
"They're all in your cassettes," Floyd confirmed. "Don't expect too much cooperation from this crew."
"Yeah, what's the matter with them?" Chandra lamented.
"It's not their fault," Floyd replied. "Well, maybe it is."
Curnow took a sip from his bottle and groaned, "Oh, God...if it has to taste like this, I don't care if my electrolytes are balanced or not!"
"There's more," Floyd told them more quietly. The change in tone alerted both instantly; they forgot their hibernation hangover. "Something extraordinary has happened on Europa. But," he advised, looking around briefly, "we shouldn't talk here."
Leonov
On final approach to Discovery
"Dear Caroline, the first part of this journey is coming to an end. We are about to rendezvous with the Discovery. The race will be on now. We're going to send a boarding party over to climb into this 800-foot-long shipwreck floating over Io, to see if she can be rescued before her orbit gives out. There are nine years of secrets inside, including a sleeping computer who knows the answers. My past is also inside...and I want those answers."
The Russian vessel's main drive coughed briefly to trim her trajectory just so, and the orbital manoeuvre was complete.
And there, a few kilometres away, was Discovery.
It was immediately obvious that docking was out of the question, because the ship was rotating end-over-end like a majorette's baton. Curnow cursed. "Fuck. We were afraid of this. Without regular maintenance the carousel's seized up and stopped. But, conservation of angular momentum an' all that shit, so all that momentum had to go somewhere, so it went -"
"- into the ship," Captain Kirbuk nodded. "Dr. Floyd, I am sure you appreciate the dangers. As things stand, Leonov cannot dock with Discovery. Even if we were to link up, the angular momentum would tear our carousel apart." He nodded in agreement. "Very well. Dr. Curnow, you must prepare for EVA. Dr. Brailovsky will accompany you; he possesses the necessary engineering experience. You must restart the carousel to mop up that spin. Only then can we manoeuvre Discovery out of her decaying orbit. We have little time."
"Da," Max nodded cheerily.
"I didn't sign up for this," Curnow protested. "I'm no Goddamn astronaut. I'm an engineer."
Floyd clapped him on the shoulder. "Walter," he soothed, using the engineer's first name for the first time, "this is why you're here. You're the only one who can do this."
He looked uncertain at best. Max, however, was confident.
The Pod Bay
Shortly after
As Floyd finished going over Curnow's spacesuit, while the Russians gave incomprehensible but routine instructions to each other, Curnow protested once again, "I'm not an astronaut. I'm an engineer. What am I doing here?"
"Temperature's good," Floyd noted. He knew of Curnow's concerns, but had little time for them. Discovery was very close to her point of no return. Leonov had cut it very fine; they had twelve hours at most.
After that, there would be nothing they could do.
True, Discovery would take over a year to impact with Io...but the workings of orbital mechanics were such that they would be unable to pull her safely away and her destruction would be inevitable. She was rapidly starting to succumb to Io's gravitational influence.
"Yeah," Curnow conceded. "You know, I hate heights."
"So do I," Floyd agreed. They were far enough away from Io to regard their position more as a distance than a true height, but Floyd did not correct him. There was too much at stake.
"We've picked good jobs, huh?" Curnow tried for levity.
The Russians were finishing with Max's suit; he nodded cheerily. He was prepared. He walked to the inner door and opened it; a red light flashed and a siren sounded. It was a universal sound, adopted by the USA and the USSR: Caution. Inner door opened. Decompression danger.
Floyd, too, was not above humour. He knocked on the visor of Curnow's sealed suit and said loudly, "Don't forget to write!"
Curnow nodded feebly.
Breathing heavily, he entered the airlock after Max, and Floyd sealed the door with a last look through the porthole. A red light was flashing to indicate that they were now depressurised and the outer door could be opened - there was no point in having a siren because in the vacuum they couldn't hear it. Max took the portable EVA unit off the wall and advised calmly, "Don't breathe too deep. Breathe normal."
Curnow nodded and tried to comply.
With no ceremony, Max opened the outer door. As it opened upwards, unfiltered sunlight lanced into the airlock from the distant Sun. Curnow's pace of breathing increased. He looked with shock at the view.
All he could see from this angle was Io, looking very, very far down (though that was of course an illusion), and the starfield, which looked very bright. He'd never been so scared.
Max used the tether connecting them to gradually pull Curnow out of the airlock, free-floating in space. Now they could see Discovery. He used the EVA unit's jet to propel them forward; Curnow, having exited the airlock backwards, found himself rotating in place to face their objective. From his perspective, Io looked to be a hell of a long way down. The intellectual part of him tried to say it was an illusion, it was a distance, not a height.
The animal part of him gibbered, Shut up, shut up, shut the fuck UP!
On the bridge, Floyd worried, "They can't stay exposed to that radiation for more than 15 minutes."
He was right; there was intense radiation between Jupiter and Io even at this distance. It was one thing they hadn't taken into account when Discovery II was planned as a five-year mission. Plus a grad student (ironically, the same pretty girl who'd told Floyd about 6-A) had pointed out that there were eddy currents being generated as Discovery passed through the magnetic field lines on each orbit. The combination of the braking effects of eddy currents and her carousel rotating had produced the erratic orbital behaviour, necessitating the Leonov mission.
Hindsight's always 20/20, he groused to himself. There was no help for it now.
They had time. Very little, but enough.
If Curnow could get a grip. That, though was a damn big 'if'.
"How's his pulse?" Floyd asked Rudenko.
"It's high," the doctor reported. "Not to worry too much."
Yeah, right.
Recovery/rescue mission
To placate his partner, whom he knew was scared, Max asked, "Hey, do you speak any Russian?"
"No."
"That's okay. I speak English well." Though I have trouble with idioms sometimes. English is very strange language. So many redundant syntactical particles, and so many different words for same thing. Is wery confusing.
"I'm fogging up," Curnow panicked slightly.
"Hey, Curnow, have you heard the one about the marathon runner and the chicken?"
"Don't patronise me," Curnow begged, "I'm getting nauseous."
"If you vomit, you will choke," Rudenko warned.
"Don't close your eyes," Floyd ordered. "Look at the middle of Discovery. The middle, not the ends. Look at the part where she's moving the least. Don't take your eyes off it."
"I'm gonna throw up. I'm an engineer, God damn it! Maybe you'd better patronise me a little. What about the marathon runner?"
"I made it up," Floyd confessed.
Curnow made a disparaging sound.
"I'm looking amidship now."
"You see any lights?"
"No. No lights. Probably main power's down," Curnow panted. They were nearly there.
Max confirmed it. "Seventy metres."
"You're almost there. How's that for patronising?"
"Not bad," Curnow admitted.
"Fifty metres." Things were going well.
"Hey, Max, how do you say 'chicken'?"
"Kuritsa," Max replied.
"Kurisa," Curnow attempted.
"Kuritsa," Max corrected.
"Kuritsa," Curnow repeated, rolling the R.
"You speak better than me," Max quipped.
"Thank you."
"Sure." He checked the distance. "Thirty metres!"
"Don't close your eyes," Curnow recited, "don't breathe too deep. Kuritsa. Kuritsa."
Max used the EVA unit twice to slow them down; he and Curnow swapped places. Curnow was now in the lead. His breathing was still more rapid than usual.
"Can you see the antenna complex?"
"Yeah."
"What condition is it in?"
"It looks, uh, nominal." He took another breath. "Christ, this thing is big!"
He knew perfectly well how big she was; he'd spent a few years building Discovery II, an identical but more advanced vessel. But back then he hadn't been floating free in space, dammit! He was gonna take this up with the NCA when he got back - why the hell hadn't they sent an astronaut already?
("Because Floyd asked for you," they later told him.)
"Fifteen metres. Look straight ahead. The centre section is hardly moving. That's where we'll grab hold. Ten metres. You're doing great, Curnow," he encouraged. Now Curnow was reaching for Discovery. "Five metres. Four. Three. Two. One."
And then Curnow made contact.
"I made it!" he gasped. "I made it!"
"Yes. Hook yourself on there," Max said.
"I'm hooking on," Curnow reported, and did so.
"Very good. I am right behind you," Max reported calmly as he too made contact with the ship and hooked on. "Look straight ahead."
"With that rotation, they'll be in full gravity before they get to the command module," Floyd noted, concerned. Like Leonov, Discovery was designed for 0.9g - close enough to Earth norm to minimise acclimation difficulties without taxing the carousel too much.
"Their pulse is rising," Rudenko observed.
"How does it look?" Floyd asked Curnow.
"It's covered with sulphur," he replied. That would be due to Io's volcanoes constantly spewing sulphur dust out into space, contaminating Discovery, not that it mattered.
"The structure looks sound," Curnow said, still holding it together except for his breathing.
"Very good, you're doing great," Max encouraged him. "Very good. We're making our way along the spine." As they proceeded Max told Curnow and Leonov, "We're just about there."
"Christ! I'm getting heavy!"
"Don't worry, we're almost there."
They inched their way along the tether. Soon Curnow reported, "We're on the command module." They were standing now to make their way to the emergency airlock which would be their point of ingress. They started to slide down the module...and then disaster struck as Curnow's fear reached a peak.
"I can't breathe!" he panicked, losing it.
"He's hyperventilating," Floyd warned.
"I can't breathe!"
"Listen to me," Floyd ordered, "thin your mixture. Add CO2."
Curnow tried to comply, but gasped, "I can't, can't - can't find it!"
"I come," Max rapped. "Wait." He made his way across to Curnow as the latter tried to breathe, panicking. He knew exactly where the gas valves were on a standard-issue Leonov suit, for he had helped design them. He found the CO2 valve and carefully cracked it. The gas flooded into Curnow's suit, calming him immediately.
"I feel so stupid," Curnow cursed, calmer now. "How do you say 'stupid'?"
"Durak," Max told him amusedly, though to be sure there was nothing funny about throwing up in a spacesuit; choking and acid burns were real possibilities.
"It's working," Curnow said. "I'm okay."
"Ten more seconds!" Floyd snapped, to make sure.
"Ten more," Curnow agreed. "Durak. That's me."
"You shouldn't feel like that," Max consoled him. "The same thing happened to me the first time I did this."
"When have you ever done this before?"
"Never," Max grinned.
Curnow resisted the temptation to swat him in exasperation. Besides, Max was pretty funny.
Now he was calmer, Curnow was starting to show the practical hard-nosed attitude for which Floyd had selected him. "I found the hatch," he told them. He brushed sulphur dust away from a panel and added, "I've got the airlock status display panel here. There's no lights, no power."
"Use the manual," Floyd instructed, as if that would never have occurred to him. But Curnow, professional now, did not rebuke him for the patronage.
"Yeah, yeah, I'm using the manual."
The tool, designed to replicate the action of a pod's claws as that was how the airlock was designed, rotated the lock. As it did so, the door slid down from their perspective.
A loose crumpled piece of paper was ejected and sped away. Both men wondered what, if anything, was written on it. Maybe it had been a note from Bowman. But they had more immediate concerns, and anyway it was out of reach now.
Floyd asked, "How does it look?"
Breathing calmly now, Curnow answered, "No apparent damage," as he shone a torch into the emergency airlock. "We're goin' in."
"Welcome to United States territory," Floyd declared to no-one in particular. Kirbuk just looked at him without comment.
Entrance to the Pod Bay
The sound of their passage echoed; clearly Discovery had retained at least some atmosphere to transmit sound. The two men took advantage of the unusual gravitational orientation to walk along the Pod Bay's inner hull. "Discovery, you all right?" Floyd requested.
"Discovery's fine," Curnow answered calmly. "There's an environment suit here…" They continued on their way, and his torch illuminated a certain control panel, "...I found HAL."
"How does he look?" Floyd asked urgently.
"Asleep," Curnow assured him; all the lights were off. "Well, one pod here. Number three."
"Any damage?"
"None that I can see. Airlocks are secure. No power. Pressure seems okay."
"Curnow? I'd like to test atmosphere here."
"What's the temperature?" Orlov asked.
"I don't know," Curnow admitted easily. "The auxiliary power's out, so the gauges don't work."
"It has to be at least a hundred below zero," Floyd figured.
"A typical Russian winter," Max joked.
"Well, I'm from California," Curnow riposted, "we don't know from 100 below zero."
"Raise the heat in his suit first," Floyd instructed.
"Yeah, I'm doing it," Curnow confirmed.
"Shine your light on his face," Rudenko's instruction came. "make sure he doesn't turn blue."
"He's right in front of me."
"Keep talking all the time."
"All right, Leonov," Max reported. "Unsealing the visor…" He did so. "I'm swinging the faceplate upward."
He did.
"It's cold," he said immediately.
"I'm taking a breath."
Dr. Rudenko watched Max's vital signs carefully, but they did not change.
"His colour's okay," Curnow observed.
Max's breath plumed as the air from his exhalations condensed in the cold. "There is oxygen here. I breathe regularly."
"It's too cold to work here without environment suits," he added, but that was a trivial concern - as soon as power had been restored, the heaters would take care of it.
Then he frowned. "There is...a strange smell here." He took a breath through his nose, which wrinkled. "Stale, rotten. Like something has…"
A look of shock and panic suffused his face, and he quickly closed the visor. Now he was the one hyperventilating.
"What's the matter?" Curnow asked.
"Discovery, what's happening?" Floyd demanded.
"I think -!"
Curnow got it immediately. "No, no, I think you're wrong!"
Floyd too understood. "Bowman was the last one aboard! Poole was lost outside! Bowman reported that he ejected all the rest who died in hibernation, there can't be anybody there!"
"Maybe Bowman managed to get back to Discovery and DIED here!" Max panicked.
"No, no, he didn't! He never came back!" Floyd denied.
Curnow had already worked out the likeliest explanation for the malodorous odour. "It's the galley," he told Max, "some meat paste went bad before Discovery froze up, that's what it is! I'm TELLING you," as Max continued to panic, "THAT'S WHAT IT IS! Hey," he finished more gently, "would I lie to you?"
Max continued his panicked breathing for a few seconds, Curnow's face projecting both concern and assurance, until the spell was broken by Orlov inquiring, "Hello, Discovery, are you there?"
Both men burst out laughing, Max's in relief and sheepishness for panicking like that. Now he knew how Curnow had felt.
It is such events that forge strong bonds of friendship. Walter Curnow and Maximilian Brailovsky were no exception.
"Yeah, we're here," Curnow answered confidently, "Everything's fine. We're proceeding to the bridge."
As they walked back along the Pod Bay inner hull, on their way, Max lamented, "Durak."
"You an' me both," Curnow acknowledged wryly. "How do you say 'thank you'?"
"Spaseba," Max gratefully told him.
